The ski lifts at Mount Baldy's ski resort, founded in 1944 by a couple of aircraft workers who wanted to ski close to home, could possibly be included in the new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.

President Barack Obama has designated the nearly 350,000 acres within the San Gabriel Mountains a national monument, but precise boundaries are still in the works.

Sound

The gallery will resume inseconds

A protester stands near the entrance to Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas before the arrival of President Barack Obama on Friday. Obama was in town to sign a proclamation designating nearly 350,000 acres within the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles a national monument.

Mount Baldy's ski resort, founded in 1944 by a couple of aircraft workers who wanted to ski close to home, could possibly be included in the new San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.

It’s been four days since President Barack Obama flew into Southern California to establish the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, but federal officials are still unclear on exactly where it is.

Is the Mount Baldy ski resort included within its 346,177 acres? What about Mount Baldy Village?

Officials with the U.S. Forest Service, which will manage the monument, don’t know for sure.

Neither does staff at the office of Rep. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, who pushed for the designation. The Department of the Interior referred inquiries to the folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who didn’t return a phone call or email.

Officials at the Angeles National Forest, where most of the monument is located, may be able to answer the question. But it will take a couple more days, spokesman Andrew Mitchell said Tuesday.

“We don’t have a good detailed map ourselves. We have a generic one. We can’t say for certain the ski resort and village are excluded,” he said.

Officials at the Angeles National Forest office and Pacific Southwest Region headquarters in Vallejo are using geographic information system data provided by the USDA and the Obama administration to create the map that will answer the questions once and for all.

Local authorities did not have a say in the final decision, Mitchell said.

The jagged eastern edge of the monument boundary wasn’t clear in a final map released last week by the White House.

San Bernardino County officials asked to be excluded from the monument because they objected to the lack of local input on the proposal and its possible effect on property rights, access and economic development.

Many mountain residents and business owners have objected to their inclusion in the monument because they fear new restrictions that could change the way they live and work.

Robby Ellingson, general manager of Mount Baldy Ski Lifts Inc., which has permits to operate on 700 acres of National Forest Land, has said he is worried that if his resort is within the monument, it will kill plans for expansion on the mountain’s back side.

Joe Cavanaugh, owner of the Burro Canyon Shooting Park on East Fork Road north of Azusa, said he has not been contacted by officials since the monument designation was made. It includes his shooting range, which is a training ground for 65 Southern California law enforcement agencies, mostly in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“I can’t think of any positives,” Cavanaugh said. The forest “has a lot of dams, public activity, recreating, biking, shooting, hunting. I don’t even understand why you would want to make it into a monument. It’s more like a park.”

Federal officials have said current uses in the San Gabriels will be allowed to continue, but details about that and other aspects of the designation have not been forthcoming.

A July study by Headwaters Economics, an independent, nonprofit research group in Bozeman, Mont., found that most activities present in areas later declared as national monuments were allowed to continue.

The group analyzed 17 national monuments in the West, all of them bigger than 10,000 acres and established between 1982 and 2011.

“One of the advantages (of designation) is they kind of lock (recreation) in place. That’s been the experience in many, many communities. Almost everything was grandfathered in,” said Chris Mehl, the group’s policy director.

“It’s not the same as a national park or wilderness. Those have a higher level of restrictions.”

The Santa Rosa-San Jacinto Mountains National Monument near Palm Desert allows grazing, hunting and fishing. As in many other monuments, it prohibits mining, mineral and geothermal leases and off-road motorized vehicles, and commercial air tour operations not conducted before February 2000.

Details of what will be permitted in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument will be laid out in its management plan, which will be written by the Forest Service with input from the public.

The process will take three years, said John Miller, spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest.

The Headwaters Economics analysis was intended to determine the economic impact that national monuments had on surrounding communities. It found that jobs, population and per-capita income did the same or better after designation of the monument, Mehl said.

Around the Santa Rosa-San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, the population grew by 34 percent from its establishment in 2000 to 2008, the report found. Personal income and jobs also increased.

The study did not establish a direct correlation between national monument status and an improved economy for surrounding communities, but it did show that the designation did not hurt financially, Mehl said.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.